Holidae

"Human! Human! We have a Holiday!"

Kloey is run over by Blake. Unceremoniously, she tumbles to the floor, grumbling under her breath. "What the heck, Blake?" For someone so small, he packs quite a punch.

The Shadow pushes himself upward. "We have a Holiday! Did you not hear? Should I speak louder?!"

She wishes momentarily that there would be a "mute button" for the Shadows. She would like to not always hear their every thought. "No! Nope... nope. I can hear you just fine."

Blake stares at her with his crystallite eyes. "OK.

"We have a Holiday! Aren't you interested in it?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure."

Christopher steps in from the corner of the room, finally coming in to resolve the conflict between his brother and the sassy tweenage human. "Forgive Blake," he says, dragging the aforementioned away and setting him on his shadowy feet. "He is very excited. We Shadows have never had a Holiday before."

Kloey bites her lip. "What is the holiday?" she asks curiously, trailing behind the two Shadows when they begin to lead her into the hallway.

"It's a gift-giving time!" Blake declares excitedly.

"So... it's like Christmas?"

Chris shakes his head. "No. Not at all."

The girl glares at Blake. She recalls vaguely that he does not speak very well in English, but that "apparently" gives him no excuse to speak as bluntly and dumbly as he does. "So what is it?"

"It's... a feasting time?" This time, Blake's voice is more hesitant. But even choosing his words carefully, he is wrong.

"So, uh, Thanksgiving?" She kicks at the floor with her shoeless feet, unsure.

"No." Christopher, frustrated, takes his brother by the head and shakes him roughly, as if to move his brain back into place. Even though Shadows do not have brains, or any organs whatsoever, and they are physically hollow on the inside. "It is not like that, either."

"Then what is it?"

Blake, still in his brother's unusually tight grip, chews on his nails. Or, more accurately, his claws. Lucky for him, he has no real tongue, otherwise his tongue would be cut into pieces because of the sharpness of his talons and teeth. "It's, em... The Shadows go around scaring humans."

"Oh." Kloey smiles, thinking the strange dilemma of words is over. "So it's like Halloween, right?"

"No."

She jumps. From behind her comes the echoing hiss, and she turns, seeing that the towering figure of Red stands just a foot away. Surprisingly, he doesn't look mad (and "mad" is the normal state of his expression, because there is always something to be mad about), only weirdly peaceful. And someone like him is never peaceful. She is immediately suspicious of him.

"If it's not Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or Halloween, or any other famous holiday in human history, then what is it?"

Red laughs. "Your insistence is funny. Did Blake try to tell you about it?"

Her and Christopher both nod. The tallest Shadow only chuckles again, amused. "...Blake is not a reliable source of information," he says.

Kloey narrows her eyes. "You couldn't have said that earlier?"

All three of the Shadow brothers share a stare, expressing their one singular thought: Human tweenagers are incredibly annoying. They wish that their human savior was a more tolerable age instead of 11.

Red ignores her comment. "Anyway, human, our Holiday is not any of your 'holidays'. It's very simple."

Chris nods his head, unreasonably still holding Blake by his stubby horns. "It's just a break from villainy."

The human blinks her brown eyes. "What? A 'break from villainy'?"

The crimson-eyed Shadow shrugs, looking down at her from his overwhelming height. "We stop kidnapping."

She waves her arms. "But Blake said something about 'feasting'! What's that all about?"

Blake squirms in his brother's arms. "Shadows like fear! And on our Holiday, we like to give people scariness, that way we can have their fear!"

Since Blake's intelligence is shrinking to that of a three-year-old, Kloey looks at Christopher, waiting for an answer that actually makes sense.

He sighs. "What he means is that we take a day off from kidnapping and resort to scaring humans instead."

Her gaze sinks to the floor. "...Oh," mutters Kloey. "That sounds... fun... and traditional..."

To keep the "fun, traditional experience" of scaring children alive, Red sets his cold hand on her shoulder and instills a feeling of terror into her stomach. For a reason she does not know, he restricted the other Shadows from doing this to her. But apparently "rules for thee, not for me" is also a Shadow saying. Red is the leader, one who is capable of enforcing rules, and yet he breaks the rules himself.

What a great example for others.

She shakes off the feeling. "Nope-- nope, no, nah." Kloey lifts his hand off her shoulder and shoves it back against his side. "No touching."

He rolls his eyes. "Human girls are so annoying." Red walks ahead and beckons for his two bickering brothers to follow behind, and she watches them walk off, crossing her arms.

"They oughta stop trying to be like humans."

***

Thank you, Vocal. These Shadow brothers deserve all the fame they can get. Five minutes of fame is all I need to make my day 😎